When the war ends.

It was Wednesday with PE class first thing. You were up early and with a spring in your step off you skipped to school. The traffic had just started so there were people milling on the main street, you greeted the postman who always winked and smiled as he passed on. You were ahead of schedule when you sensed a sudden, intense flash from behind, a roar wrapped itself around your head, crushing your eardrums and the ground erupted all around. It threw you and you flew. You didn´t know what had touched you that morning, a fearful unknown, the utter confusion, a bomb they called it. You scrambled for your schoolbag between stalled cars in suffocating dust. Emerging from the cloud you left frozen people behind but you had to get to school, you were the captain of the team. Though you didn´t mention it, you would never be a team player again no matter how much you tried.

Newspaper headlines declared last month, “Northern Ireland suicide rates soar after peace deal” as if it were some great surprise.(1) Another read “Drink and drugs fuelling Northern Ireland suicide rates” (2) and even the author of the most recent study preached, “we seem to have adjusted to peace by means of mass medication with anti-depressants, alcohol and non-prescription drugs”.(3) Drink and drugs are not the cause, or not that we haven´t been able to adjust to peace, the problem is we still haven´t recovered from the civil war which raged here for thirty years.

Figures show that men who grew up during the worst of the Troubles are most at risk from suicide.(4) The younger age group (15-24) which attracts most media attention, has a trend line that has changed very little since the late 1970s. Now, fourteen years on from the Good Friday Agreement it would appear the conflict is still claiming victims and we´re not talking about frontline casualties here, such as terrorists, police or army personnel, one in ten of the general population lost a close relative to violence. Another study revealed half of over-45s whose lives were touched by the conflict had signs of at least one treatable mental health condition, concluding that an individual who experienced a traumatic event is three times more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and/or alcohol abuse.(5) Therefore, not surprisingly trauma experts at the University of Ulster also found that Northern Ireland has one of the highest Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) rates in the world.(6)

If you think that PTSD, once referred to as “shell shock”, is just related to Northern Ireland, Vietnam or the Iraq war then think again. It is now believed that any event, which causes feelings of fear, helplessness or horror, can trigger PTSD e.g. the rate of PTSD in adults who were in foster care for one year between the ages of 14–18 was found to be higher than that of combat veterans returning from the frontline.(7) Experiencing sexual or physical abuse, witnessing violence and/or bullying all have the potential to trigger a psychological trauma which is often longer lasting and more damaging than the original physical trauma. It is not unknown for an individual to survive a car crash, and then years later go on to take his or her own life. "Human-inflicted harm - such as rape, assault, and torture - also tends to be more traumatic than “acts of God” or more impersonal accidents and disasters. The extent to which the traumatic event was unexpected, uncontrollable, and inescapable also plays a role".(8)

Although not everyone who experiences such trauma will go on to develop PTSD a significant proportion will suffer symptoms such as memory flashbacks, nightmares or persistent replaying of events. These individuals are often unwilling to talk about what has happened, they feel numb or that their life has been changed by the event. Many of these reactions are the mind´s way of trying to understand what has happened. However, the result is a change in normal behaviour, problems concentrating or sleeping, anger, irritability or an over vigilance in normal situations e.g. seeing danger around every corner. These changes go on to affect relations with family and friends, make work and everyday living difficult and foster a sense of isolation. These sufferers also tend to self-harm e.g. cutting/burning because they want to feel again or block out painful memories.

Although the psyche is resilient there is only so much fear or stress a person can tolerate. One theory explains PTSD as an adaptive response to danger i.e. a reaction we have developed from our ancestors when we relied on the group to survive. To better the group/tribe´s chances of survival, dangers and traumatic experiences had to be shared so everyone could learn from them and decide how to react in the future. The human nervous system, in response to the experience of a personal danger, records the event and then assumes duties beyond our immediate personal survival. These duties include:

•   To protect the individual from the immediate danger.

•   To inform the group of the danger.

•   To need that the group is protected from the danger.(9)

If any of these of these requirements are not met then the individual is at risk of PTSD e.g. if they´re too young to understand/communicate or there is no tribe. People with healthy homes and solid friendships are often able to walk and talk through their trauma with love and support. By reaching out for help, sharing experiences one can avoid negative feelings spiralling out of control. Whether in a familiar or professional setting you can avoid PTSD developing by sharing the traumatic event with others. However, some fail and many are children like those who lived in N. Ireland at the height of the Troubles. Many of these young people repressed their trauma. There was little known about PTSD back in the 1970s & 80s where now grief councilors are called into schools if a child dies under violent circumstances e.g. the recent school shootings in the US. The function of these professionals is to firstly establish a sense of safety for the traumatised child, to try and resolve the negative feelings that they may have internalised and lead them to develop mechanisms for coping with future issues.

Ideally back then this help could have been aided by good parenting but as we know many parents couldn´t even feed their children adequately let alone repair their damaged psyches. The North for the majority was just about surviving day to day while living in a state of fear. It was a civil war and sectarianism was not a term that came up much in the conversation of an 8 or 9 year old. We, innocently, as young kids, played at war games but never thought we´d be participating in them for real. Yes, our conflict, like many, continues to claim its victims but it´s no good berating us for self-medicating on booze and drugs when our traumatised province has only recently established a sense of safety. Like the counselled children we now need the space, investment and time to resolve our internalised traumas, only then will we be able to embrace peace and look forward to the future.

Ants, slavery and the Irish recession.

I started killing ants last week. Well, I don´t really know if they are dead but I can´t imagine being catapulted en masse into the depths of a hoover bag is particularly healthy for them. But then darkness is where the intrepid ants build their nest, where the queen lays her thousands of eggs, hatching more slaves to scour my kitchen in search of food. And maybe that´s the fear I have, that they´ll never cease their remorseless marching or multiplying. They´re harmless but they get everywhere so I hoover everywhere, the oven, the fridge, the cutlery drawer and sometimes more than ants. While extracting a spoon from the hose the other day I came to the conclusion that humans are not unlike ants and unemployment is like a giant hoover.

Work is not just a means to an end i.e. to earn money it also carries the very human value of usefulness. Like the ant ferrying his grain of sugar back to the colony, as workers we feel we are contributing to society, a social togetherness - a team effort. The same collectiveness has seen the Irish taxpayer assume responsibility for the debts of banks that successive governments failed to moderate. We saved them from ruin with our hard-earned cash and we didn´t even get a thank you. In fact, we got half-blamed for the current situation; we borrowed too much, we spent too much, we´re all guilty. Saying the Irish taxpayer contributed to the implosion of the banks in this country is like leaving poison out for the ants and blaming the dog when he eats it and falls down dead!

Over the billions wasted how many bankers have done or will do time in jail? We could fill more than one vacuum bag with all that refuse. Yet, the government punishes us and rewards our money back to the same eejits. Instead of job investment they focus on budget deficits, cut spending in public works and seem somewhat surprised when unemployment starts to rise. And don´t think crushing labour reform is not around the corner. Look at Spain, 23% unemployment, every one in two under 25 without work, and what do the government do to stimulate job growth? They change the law to make it easier for employers to sack their workers. Knowing that unemployment paralyses consumption, it damages the economy and puts more people out of work, you may well ask what are they playing at? Why is the government fanning the flames of another recession, it doesn´t make sense. But, it makes perfect sense.

The reality is that in the global economy the production of goods counts for very little. The earnings achieved from abstract activities such as speculation, betting on shares and bonds, today generates 75 times more profit than all the workers in the world when they get up every morning to plant potatoes, thread sewing machines, mend fishing nets or write a book. The government and the banks borrow the money off the European Central Bank either directly or indirectly, often creating it out of thin air and when flush again, they´re all back in the game. Meanwhile, the Irish taxpayer picks up the tab and pays the interest. As long as the government can convince the Germans we are all stupid enough to keep paying, so the gambling continues. Unfortunately, this game does not need our blood and sweat, it only asks that the laws that permit speculation are left unhindered. Therefore, all that remains for us is to choose calmly between unemployment or the life of a slave with our working rights diminished. We are now worse off than the ants - while we were out slaving all day the neighbouring queen brought ours round a chocolate cake and when we return tired from a hard day´s work we have to sit and watch the two fatties stuffing themselves.  Our collected crumbs now seem insignificant and we begin to worry if we are all that important to the queen or our once cohesive colony.

This is the fear and insecurity that hampers a workers response. Wage cuts and reduction of working hours trigger our survival instincts, there is a reluctance to defend workers rights and the employers exploit it.  Even so, if all the human beings in the world went on general strike the machinations of money would be able to survive without problem for some time without ever threatening its interests. In times like these we look to our unions to come to the rescue but knowing the above what good would it do us? The solution lies with the political system that got us into this mess in the first place. Speculation can only be regulated via laws drafted by politicians, its credit access controlled by our government. Two years from now, or sooner if we are lucky, those same peaked faces with their familiar shuffle will slither back up our doorsteps to seek our support.

Until then they´ll scuttle back and forth to Germany, receiving their orders. Ruthlessly they´ll fulfill them whipping the backs of the Irish now condemned to the beat of the slave galleys. In the celebrated German employment model seven million workers earn only 400 euros per month. Remember a slave-based society always had full employment and recognise these traders that service this speculative economy are traffickers in misery. They too travel in blackened boats!